Smoky, the Cowhorse
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15
Ratings3
Average rating3
The experiences of a mouse-colored horse from his birth in the wild, through his capture by humans and his work in the rodeo and on the range, to his eventual old age.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is painfully slow and written in slang. Read this one because I'm going through all the Newbery winners and it was a slog. Onto better things!
A story of a great horse. Smoky is taught to be an excellent cowhorse, but even in his training, the cowboy teaching him sees the unusual abilities of this horse. Smoky spends many years as a cowhorse with Clint and the other cowboys, but one year, he is stolen by a renegade. The renegade treats Smoky harshly and turns Smoky into a bucking bronco, the fiercest horse in the West. Smoky spends many years establishing a reputation as a killer bronco, but gradually he grows old and tired and is sent to serve as a horse providing pony rides for children and old people. Somehow Clint finds Smoky again and the story ends happily ever after.
The most fun part of the story is the way the whole book is written in cowboy dialect. The parts with the renegade have lots of racial slurs and can be difficult for a modern reader to get through.
